Arbor Day
by JDPhoenix
Summary: Holiday Chaos 2 Following the events of St. George's Day, Tommy becomes paranoid. Though, when the original Red Ranger really is out to kill you, I'm not sure it can be called paranoia.


Disclaimer: I own nothing and make no profit off of this work (sadly).

AN: That's right, you all asked for a sequel to St. George's Day, so here it is.

**Arbor Day**

by JDPhoenix

"Come on boys!" Conner's voice echoed across the park. "Put your backs into it!"

Several of the little boys picked up the pace, one groaned and was met with a glare from the others. Conner was a very easygoing coach most of the time, but when his girlfriend talked him into something he turned into a taskmaster.

"Thanks for the help," Krista said, squeezing Conner's hand and giving him a quick peck on the cheek before going to supervise the hole digging. Conner melted. His face took on a goofy look and he slumped a bit. A couple of the soccer players shook their heads.

"Conner!" a familiar voice hissed. "Con-_ner_!" the voice hissed louder.

Conner shook himself out of his daze and looked around. He was just reaching for his not-there morpher when he spotted a familiar figure hiding behind a tree and gesturing frantically. Conner slowly walked over, wondering if Dr. O had finally lost his mind.

"Dude, what's up? Shouldn't you be in school?" Conner asked. Dr. O reached out and pulled Conner behind the tree so fast that the boy momentarily flew through the air.

"I took a sick day. I need your help."

"You got that right," Conner said, pulling himself free. There was a wild look in Dr. O's eyes and they kept darting from side to side.

"I need you to smuggle me out of the country. I'm going to teach science to poor kids in Mexico. Rocky's setting me up in a small village in Guerrero."

"Why are you going to Mexico? And why do you have to be smuggled out?" Conner's voice slowly rose until it became a shriek. "Oh my goodness! My mentor's an international drug smuggler! You were doping us that whole time! None of it was real! You and Mercer were in cahoots from the beginning! I bet that whole White Ranger thing was just to make Trent more appealing to Kira! It was all some sick game!"

_Smack!_

"Will you shut up!" Tommy hissed, viciously shaking Conner. "Unless you've been doing things in your spare time that I don't know about—and don't want to, thank you very much—you were never, during all the time I mentored you, under the influence of any legal or illegal substance. Unless it was sugar. Or caffeine." Tommy composed himself, straightening his stained, wrinkled shirt for good measure. "I just need to get out of the country as soon as possible."

"Why?" Conner asked, still suspicious.

Tommy rubbed the bridge of his nose. A motorcycle backfired in the distance and Tommy paled. "I gotta go. I'll be at Hayley's when you're ready."

Tommy kept low to the ground as he ran off - serpentine - into the trees.

Conner shook his head and returned to the large patch of dirt his team was digging up. The boys were huddled at the far end and Krista was standing in front of them, her most menacing look boring into Conner.

"Uh, may that be a lesson to you all!" Conner yelled to them, trying to regain some of his authority. "Whenever anyone offers you drugs, you yell very, very, very, very, very, _very, __**very**_ loud."

Krista gave him a quizzical look before turning and kneeling so she was eye level with the boys. "Coach Conner's right, you never accept drugs from anyone. Though you probably shouldn't yell, most people who would give you drugs wouldn't worry about hurting you to make you be quiet."

Conner silently patted himself on the back. He'd actually managed to pull it off. As the boys went back to their tree planting, he thought back on the conversation he'd had with Tommy. He'd have to go to Hayley's later to find out what was wrong. But he really didn't want to. Times like this he started to wish the others were still around.

* * *

"It's all over," Tommy moaned as Conner walked in the door to Hayley's later that night. 

"It is not all over," Hayley intoned in a voice that clearly said she'd been saying it for a while now.

Tommy was laying on one of the tables, a wet rag folded on his forehead. Hayley was wiping down the counter.

"What's all over?" Conner asked.

Tommy didn't just flinch, he jumped a good foot in the air and pulled away from the door, coming to land just on the edge of the table so that he ended up in a bruised pile of fallen chairs on the floor.

"Warn a guy, would you, Conner?" Tommy groaned. "Are you ready to go?"

"My kids have a game tomorrow morning," Conner said, "we're not going to Mexico."

Tommy moaned, stumbling onto one of the stools.

"What's wrong?" Conner asked Hayley.

"I have no idea," Hayley said. She was eying Tommy, who by now was sobbing into his hands. "He's been weird all week. He always is on St. George's Day—something about his Dragonzord and a clone. I never got the full story. I didn't think it was anything at first, but this year it didn't go away and today he comes in here like this and scares off all my customers."

"I saw you at the festival," Conner said to Tommy. "You didn't look happy when Krista was reading to the kids."

"I wasn't," Tommy grumbled.

Conner and Hayley exchanged looks.

"Then what happened?" Hayley asked.

"I saw a girl laughing," Tommy grumbled, this time with more force.

"What was she laughing at?" Conner asked.

"Me."

"Why?"

"Because it was Kim!" Tommy roared. His head shot up and he faced them, a wild look in his eye, daring them to comment.

"Wha- what did she say?" Hayley asked, slowly reaching for the baseball bat she kept under the bar.

"She laughed at the story and then she took me to get drunk," Tommy moped.

"You got drunk?" Conner asked warily. He wasn't sure he wanted to hear this after the drug scare that morning.

"It was horrible," Tommy said. "I can only remember bits and pieces. We laughed about Forever Red, and then we started talking about old times, and we talked about Zordon, and she cried, and I held her for a while, and then we talked about the Pan Globals, and then we started yelling about the letter—"

"What about the letter?" Hayley asked eagerly. Whenever she'd spoken to any of Tommy's friends for a long period of time, the letter came up. Even when she spoke to Anton. Everyone in Tommy's life seemed to know that it had a profound impact on him, but no one seemed to know the whole story behind it. And Hayley, ever the scientist, was itching to learn something new.

"I said it was the most evil thing she'd ever done and maybe that spell Goldar was supposed to put on her took a while to sink in."

Conner shot Hayley a questioning look but Hayley just shrugged.

"And she said I was an idiot and didn't I know that girls wanted to be chased and why didn't I come after her or tell her to stay. And I didn't have an answer for that."

"And?" Conner asked.

"And we ended up having sex on my coffee table."

Hayley had just enough presence of mind to slap her hands over Conner's ears at the word "having"—she knew what was coming next.

"Hey!" Conner yelled when Hayley finally let him go. "What was that for?"

"What happened the next day?" Hayley asked Tommy, effectively avoiding Conner's question.

"I had class and she had a lecture to give in Anaheim."

"You haven't spoken to her since?" Hayley demanded. "Did you not hear the part about going after her?"

"I don't know where she lives!" Tommy wailed. "And we were too embarrassed to think to exchange numbers!"

"Wait!" Conner yelled. "How does this explain why you're going to Mexico?"

Tommy sighed. "Do you have any idea what Jason is going to do when he finds out that I slept with Kim?"

"Oh," Hayley said, realization dawning. "Let's get you to Mexico. Or," Tommy cringed at the evil glint in her eye, "we could find Kimberly's number on the internet."

"But Jason would still kill me."

But Hayley was already typing furiously on the nearest computer. "Not if you can get to Vegas before he finds you."

"What?" Tommy and Conner yelled.

"Oh, please. Jason's going to kill you for sleeping with the girl he regards as a little sister. He can't kill you if you're is not-really-brother-in-law."

* * *

"So," Trini said, "tell me everything." 

She and Kimberly were sitting cross-legged on Trini's living room carpet. Trini was grinning like a schoolgirl and Kimberly wasn't sure she wasn't doing the same.

"Well, after I got him away from the park we went to this bar and drank until we were about to burst. We talked about that idiotic moon mission—" Trini rolled her eyes "—and old times. He held me when I cried about Zordon."

"Aww," Trini crooned.

"I know. And then I said, 'I should have been there more,' and he jumped all over me about the letter. He was a total jerk. We ended up having this huge fight about every stupid thing we ever did. The bartender threw us out halfway through." Trini gave her a questioning look. "Oh, we were too busy yelling at each other to care," Kimberly explained. A drunk Ranger was not someone to throw bodily from any building. "We ended up walking back to his place, yelling the whole way. I told him he was an idiot and wasn't he paying attention during all those chick flicks I dragged him to. I wanted him to chase me! Maybe I didn't know it, but I did want him to. And he never did, he never even asked me to stay! He had a million reasons to: the team, for one. And he could have just said _he_ didn't want me to and—"

"Kim," Trini said gently, holding up a hand. "You're ranting."

"Sorry."

"Now, what happened when you got to his house?"

"Well…."

* * *

Jason Lee Scott walked stealthily into his kitchen. He was carrying seven paper grocery bags—they had been out of the plastic ones, and on Arbor Day too!—three in each arm and one hanging from his mouth. He had seen Kim's car in the driveway and had decided to surprise his wife and friend with dinner. There was a frozen pizza in the bag and he was fairly certain he could put it in the oven without ruining it. 

"—ay!" Jason heard from the living room. He slowly and quietly unpacked the groceries, hearing the occasional exclamation coming from the other room. With the groceries all put away he checked the oven. He was surprised, when he closed the oven, to hear Kim's voice saying, "Tommy." Now he was really interested. He sidled over to the door and listened.

"…sex on his coffee table…"

Jason was out the door before he knew he was moving.

* * *

"What was that?" Kim asked. 

Trini hurried into the kitchen, grabbing a trophy from a shelf on the way. "Oh crap!"

"That did not sound good!" Kim called.

"Jason was here!" Trini said, rushing back into the room. She grabbed her keys and phone off a table and raced for the door.

"Where did he go?" Kim asked, following close behind Trini.

"I'm betting he heard just enough of our conversation to justify killing Tommy. Come on, we're following him."

"Trini!" Kim yelled and Trini skidded to a halt halfway to her car. "What could he have heard that justifies killing Tommy?"

"You do remember the part about sex on the coffee table?" Trini deadpanned.

"Oh, no."

* * *

"Jason, please!" Tommy yelled, dodging behind one of the tables. 

Jason kicked it at him. Tommy dodged again. The table flew into the stage and broke into several pieces.

"Oh!" Hayley whined, but ducked back behind the bar with Conner a second later when Tommy dove behind the barstools.

"If you thought I was going to kill you on Muranthias, you ain't seen nothing yet!" Jason roared, tackling Tommy.

"Jason Lee Scott!" Trini yelled in shock. She and Kim rushed at the boys and pulled them apart. "What did you think you were doing?"

"He slept with Kim!"

"Jason," Trini began.

"No! He treated Kim like some one-night stand! And I'm gonna kill him!" He lunged for Tommy again, but this time Conner and Trini grabbed his shoulders.

"Jason," Kim said, "we did not have sex."

"What?" several voices chorused.

"We did not have sex," Kim repeated. "You threw up on the stairs so I tried to get you back down to the couch and you just collapsed on the coffee table. I tried to get you back up, which is probably where you got the idea that we had sex. I was drunk too!" she explained. "I leaned over you and tried to pull you up by your shoulders, but you wouldn't budge."

Tommy, Jason, Trini, and Kim stood in embarrassed silence.

"Well," Hayley said, smoothing her blouse, "now that that's all settled. Who is going to fix my bar?!"

* * *

_AN: May that be a lesson to everyone: never get drunk with Tommy Oliver, never sleep with Kim Hart, and never ask JDP to write a sequel expecting drunkenness and sex. The sequel to this is up now. It's called Mother's Day. Find out what happens immediately after this story ends and how much stranger the Rangers can make this holiday._

_Remember to review! Otherwise I won't know how many of you made it this far!_


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